So You Want to Sing Jazz: A Guide for Professionals

by Jan Shapiro

Since the 1930s and ̕40s, jazz has stood tall in American popular music, drawing into its embrace not only great horn players, percussionists, guitarists, bassists, and pianists, but also some of the greatest singers in America’s musical history. Jazz has laid the groundwork for important innovations in modern singing, opening up entirely new ways of delivering songs through what would eventually become jazz standards—songs that formed the basis of the American Songbook. In So You Want to Sing Jazz, singer and professor of voice Jan Shapiro gives a guided tour through the art and science of the jazz vocal style. Throughout, Shapiro hones in on what makes jazz singing distinctive, suggesting along the way how other types of singers can make use of jazz. She looks at such key matters in jazz singing as the role of improvisation, the place of specific singers who influenced and even defined vocal jazz as we know it today, and the unique way in which jazz incorporates vibrato, conversational delivery, rhythmic phrasing, and melodic embellishment and improvisation.The book includes guest-authored chapters by singing voice researchers Dr. Scott McCoy and Dr. Wendy LeBorgne. In So You Want to Sing Jazz, singers and voice teachers finally have the go-to resource they need for singing vocal jazz.The So You Want to Sing series is produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing Jazz features online supplemental material on the NATS website. Please visit www.nats.org to access style-specific exercises, audio and video files, and additional resources.

238 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 16, 2015

Reviews

[Abhay Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

One thing I loved about this book is the abundance of references it makes to songs that include the technique that is mentioned in this book. Unfortunately that’s the only good thing about this book from the perspective of someone who has already had some experience with jazz. I went into it assuming It would break down in great detail how to scat, vocal warmups and cool downs, etc… but it was more of a book for someone who hasn’t spent anytime within the jazz idiom and/or has never sung before and is just starting out. Again, the examples were awesome though, it’s helped me learn about so many jazz artists I didn’t previously know about.